Archive for August, 2011

I am an improbable maths junkie. I say improbable because, despite topping maths in my first 2 high school years, loving algebra, arithmetic and geometry, as soon as trigonometry entered the classroom I quickly took a slippery slide down to the bottom of the year. But my curiosity and love for maths has never left me. It is a definite in an emotional world of second guessing. It provides a structure to people’s lives, like religion or poetry yet based on an exact science.

I do get geeky in my search for a good fiction book that has mathematical elements woven throughout the story, whether it is escaping into the age of Romanticism in Tom Petsinis’ The French Mathematician, exploring maths and motherhood in Sue Woolfe’s Leaning Towards Infinity or grappling with obsessive-compulsive disorder and love in Toni Jordan’s Addition.

We’re having #geekreads in honour of Science Week and we all relate geekiness with technology but I tend to think that most of us have areas of interest where our enthusiasm, possibly seen as over enthusiasm by others, renders us geeks. I’m probably a bit geeky in several areas but I think the main one would be classic British novels and the BBC versions made of them. I like nothing better than pointing out which actors, in what I am currently watching, were in which adaptations of Jane Austen or Brontë sisters’ books. Imagine my joy when I watched a version of Jane Eyre where Mr Rochester played Captain Wentworth in an early Persuasion and St John played Captain Wentworth in a later version! You’re not thrilled by that? No, it’s just me and my area of geekiness.

Science and technology may not be areas where I spend a lot of down time but, luckily for this month’s theme, I do occasionally get excited about books which happen to be science fiction. My book club recently read Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go. Knowing him to be the author of The Remains of the Day, I wasn’t expecting dystopian science fiction but was delighted to find it.

A rather more obviously science fiction read is CS Lewis’ Cosmic Trilogy. I would read CS Lewis’ shopping list, such is my love for him, but only very recently came to read his science fiction and what a joy it was! Out of the Silent Planet, Perelandra and That Hideous Strength took me to Mars, Venus and Cambridge and the hero is a middle aged philiologist….. sigh.

National Science Week will be on 14 to 22 August. In honour of that August reading for #readit2011 is geekreads.

When you think of geekreads think science both fact and fiction, books, books, blogs, tweets and magazines. Great places to start with online reading for these areas are New Scientist, Scientific American and Boing boing.

So come join us and tweet about what you are reading this August using the twitter hashtag #geekreads. You can also use this tag on other social media sites such as flickr or when you post about your reading on your blog.

You might also want to add tags for each month’s reading to Trove, Library Thing, and your library catalogue (if that is possible) – so that other people can see what you are reading.

We hope you will join us in our geeky reading, and share your own reading during #geekreads.

There will be a twitter discussion 8.00pm (AEST) 30 August to discuss #geekreads. See you online then.